This is one of those stories from the Bible that Hollywood has never really done justice to. Look, I love Charlton Heston. But when he stumbles down the mountainside clutching the two stone tablets at his side, he doesn’t look like a man who has bathed in the radiance of the glory of God. He looks like a man who just stuck his thumb in a light socket – dazed, and ever so slightly singed.
The amazing thing, though, is that Cecil B. DeMille’s version is actually an improvement on older depictions of Moses. If you want to see what I mean, when you get home, pick up an art book or go online and find a picture of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. Like everything else the man touched, it’s a work of sheer genius, except for one little detail. And no, it’s not the fact that Moses, who was 80 years old by this point, has the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Look at his forehead. Moses has horns. Real, live, stubby little goat-horns growing right out of his scalp.
In Michelangelo’s defense, he wasn’t the only one. Virtually every picture of Moses you find right up to the 19th century includes the horns, thanks to a little quirk in the Latin translation of the Bible used by the Roman Catholic Church. As it happens, the Hebrew word used to describe the rays of glory coming off of Moses’ face can also mean horns, like the horns of a sheep. Unfortunately, faced with the choice, Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, picked the wrong one. And so, for a thousand years, in pictures, at least, Moses had antlers.
Here in Exodus 34, though, we don’t read about a man-goat, or even about a man in shock. The Bible makes it very clear in verse 29 that Moses himself didn’t realize there was anything different about him. But his brother Aaron, and the elders, and the people of Israel – they saw it right away. When he came down from Mt. Sinai with the stone tablets of the Law in his hands, Moses was different. Verse 29 says that the “skin of his face shone, because he had been talking to God.” No horns. No freaky hairdo. But a radiance, the reflection of the light of God’s presence, right there on his face, for the world to see.
Now, if you remember, this wasn’t Moses’ first trip to the top of Mt. Sinai. It wasn’t even the first set of tablets that he had been given. The first time he came down, when he saw the Israelites dancing around and worshipping the golden calf that Aaron had built, Moses smashed the tablets on the ground in anger. And why not? The Law that was written on them – “you shall have no other gods before me”; “you shall not make for yourself a graven image”; “you shall not take the name of the Lord in vain”; and so forth – had been broken before Moses even got to the bottom of the hill.
After taking care of the calf, and his brother Aaron, Moses went back up the mountain. This time he wasn’t there to hear from God. He was there to beg for God’s forgiveness. And he got it. He begged God not to abandon Israel, but to go before them into the promised land. God agreed to do that, too. And most importantly – we talked about this last week – Moses asked God for a favor: “Please,” he said, “show me your glory.” So God hid Moses in a crack in the rock, and caused his glory to pass before him. No man, he warned, can see him as he truly is, and live to tell about it. But Moses was given a glimpse, “from behind,” as the Bible puts it. And then he was sent on his way, two new tablets in hand, back to the Israelite camp.
But he wasn’t the same. Everyone who looked at him – even people who had never seen him before – realized that this man had been with God. It showed. It wasn’t a look that Moses cultivated. He didn’t even realize it was happening. But he had changed, and everyone could see it.
That’s the way it is, isn’t it? It’s a simple Biblical truth: He – or she – who meets God – who is ushered into his presence, who beholds his glory, who sees and takes in the radiance of his glory, his truth, his righteousness – that person is changed. It’s as simple as that. He is not the same.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this myself, in this congregation alone. People who have come to faith in Christ for the first time, or whose faith has been renewed, say something to the effect that the people around them – the people they work with, their husbands and wives, people they meet in the grocery store, whatever – noticed that something was different. In some of those cases, yes, the person had changed in obvious ways. One man – not in this church – one man told me, “Now that I’m a Christian, everyone says that I’m not nearly as big a jerk as I was.” Well, yes: the Bible paints a pretty clear picture of what a follower of Jesus will be like, and it looks, well, like Jesus. Gentleness, patience, humility, kindness, a concern for the poor and the needy and those who are sick and who fear and for the lost. But the change goes deeper even than that. What people are really noticing is something on the inside, a change in the spirit – in fact, a new spirit, the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God, living inside the Christian.
Now, I’d love to tell you that the reaction to that change is universally positive. Unfortunately, it isn’t. In verse 30 here, it says that the Israelites, including Aaron, Moses’ own brother, were “afraid to come near him.” They saw the radiance of the glory of God on his face. And they hid. Likewise, a lot of people, when they become Christians, or when they really get serious about following Christ, discover that not everyone is particularly happy about it. Wives and husbands accuse them of becoming distant. Friends say that they’ve changed, and not in a good way. They run into not just confusion, but outright resentment. And they all have the same question: Why?
The answer is a mix of jealousy and shame: Jealousy, in that this encounter with God, this relationship, seems unfair. Why did Moses get to talk to God, and I didn’t? Why has my brother, or wife, or cousin, had this spiritual experience, and I haven’t? As for the shame, the Gospel of John explains it best, in the third chapter, verses 19 and 20:
“This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”
When you give your heart to Christ, when you decide to follow Jesus wherever he leads, you will be changed. And it’s going to be obvious. If you haven’t noticed any change, or any change recently, ask yourself: Am I really following Jesus? And be prepared: Not everyone is going to like the change. In fact, some people are going to hate it with a passion.
The easy response would be to say, well, heck with them, I’m going to keep this to myself. Moses had his veil, right? I’ll have my own. But look at verse 32. It says that Moses called the people of Israel to him, and talked with them, and that he “commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.” See, the fact of the matter is that this business of being a follower of Jesus isn’t something you can hide, no matter how hard you try. People are going to notice. Yes, some of them will be angry about it. But some will pay attention. And that glory reflected from you, my friends, may be the first glimpse they ever get. It may be that they never knew there was anything beyond their own experience. They saw life as an empty, plodding accident. And then they meet you. And they see what you have. And maybe, just maybe, the Lord uses that to prod them a little closer, to ask what, exactly, it is about you that’s so unusual, and how they can get it. The only glimpse of Christ they ever see may be his reflection on your face, in your life. If that scares you… maybe it should.
That raises one last question about this story from Exodus 34: If Moses didn’t mind letting the Israelites see his shiny face – and verses 34 and 35 make it clear that he spoke to them without the veil – then what was the point of covering up when he was done?
To figure that out, we have to turn to Paul, to 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 13: “Since we have such a hope,” he says – he’s talking about the new covenant in Christ, about the forgiveness of sins by his blood, and about the gift of the Holy Spirit – “we are very bold,” he says, “not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites would not see the end of the fading splendor.” Moses wore the veil not so that the Israelites wouldn’t see the glory of God reflected on his face. He wore it so they wouldn’t see the glory fade. The point Paul was making was that the difference between Moses and the average Christian isn’t that one has seen God. Remember: Jesus said that if you have seen him, you have seen the Father in all his glory. The difference is where the light comes from. Moses, if you’ll pardon a seriously low-brow illustration, was like one of those glow-in-the-dark stickers that’s incredibly bright when the light is first turned out, but fades quickly, because it has no light of its own. Followers of Jesus, on the other hand, says Paul, are like stained glass windows – the light isn’t reflected off of them, it shines from within, from the Holy Spirit. You ask, why don’t I have what Moses had? And it’s true. You don’t. You have something better. There’s no need for a veil.
I want to leave you with two different requests, depending on where you are. If you have heard the call of Christ, if you’ve started down that road, following Jesus, you are changed. It’s as simple as that. You’ve encountered the living God, and you will never be the same. It’s nothing to be afraid of. The world may not like what it sees, but it will see. Let his light shine through you. And pray that through you, the world might see a glimpse of him, and be changed too.
If, on the other hand, you’ve held back, if you’ve never really put in with everything you have; if you’re sitting on the fence, admiring Jesus from a distance, I ask you: Look around. Yes, the Christians you see are flawed people. Trust me, we know. But look closely: Is there something else at work there? Is there, in this gospel, in the lives of followers of Jesus Christ, even a glimpse of something good, and true, and beautiful? You have your invitation: Come, and see. Throw off your fears and come to Christ. Give yourself to him, really, truly, totally. Ask him to be yours, and for you to be his. And prepare to see his glory. Amen.
